Britons are farthest from being prudes when it comes to salacious writing. They have the entire Victorian era to swear by. Using a questionable vowel in a four-letter word normally does not cause panic, unless if it appears in a book for children.
Jacqueline Wilson has arrived at this literary truth the hard way.
One of Britain’s best selling authors has been made to look foolish after a grand parent decided she will not have her grand niece read Wilson’s My Sister Jodie when she found that the four-letter word, twit, appears later in the text as twat.
A misprint or not, the woman’s complaint has led the book’s publishers, Random House, to remove the word from the next edition and superstore, Asda, to remove it from its shelves across the country.
It all began when Anne Dixon from Co Durham, bought a copy of the book as a gift for her great-niece Eve Coulson, aged 9.
As a precaution - to make sure that the book was not too sad for Eve, not to check for obsenity - Dixon, 55, decided to read it herself. “I got to the page where the reference was made to a ‘toffeenosed twit',” she said. “On the next page the word changed. I thought I was mistaken, but I saw to my shock it had been repeated twice again.
“I am not a prude. In fact, I am quite broadminded, but this is completely inappropriate for children. They should not have to be subjected to trash and vulgarity. I did not expect this from a well-respected author and do not want my young niece to have to see this obscene slang.”
Dixon sent an e-mail to Dame Jacqueline but when she did not reply she complained to the Stanley branch of Asda, from which she had bought the book. Asda has now withdrawn the title from its stores nationwide until it is amended by Random House.
Perhaps the reason for Dame Jacqueline's failure to reply was sheer embarrassment. According to Random House sources, she was unaware of the word's reference to the female genitalia. Her dictionary, The Times was told, listed it as meaning “a foolish or despicable person”.
The Collins English dictionary gives three meanings for the word, twat: “The female genitals, a girl or woman considered sexually and a foolish or despicable person (unknown origin)”, in that order.
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary says twat means “vulva” often used in the “vulgar”, its origin “unknown”.
However, a dictionary for kids on the web, http://dictionary.kids.net.au/word/twat
offers the meaning: “A man who is a stupid incompetent fool”.
The mother of everything British, Encyclopedia Britannica, has no results for the word on its web site at all. It tells you: “There are currently no full text results for your search: ‘twat’. Please check to see if you spelt your query correctly. Or, try a different or more general query term”.
Twit, on the other hand, means “a silly person” or “fool” in all dictionaries.
No wonder, then, that British authors preferring to spell twit with an ‘a’, to give them the benefit of doubt, may have chosen to go for the non-sexual meaning of the word.
To that extent, Dame Jacqueline is in good company. The poet Robert Browning included it in his dramatic poem Pippa Passes (1841), under perhaps the mistaken impression that it meant some kind of nun's headwear: “The owls and bats/ Cowls and twats/ Monks and nuns/ In a cloister's moods.”
The popular theory is that Browning was misled by a scurrilous poem of 1660, which included the couplet: “They'd talk't of his having a Cardinall's Hat/ They'd send him as soon an Old Nun's Twat.”
Dame Jacqueline, who has sold more than 20million books in Britain and whose stories have been translated into more than 30 languages, also has the support of John Simpson, the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. He said: “I do not think it is felt to be the worst swear word in the language. It is used to mean a mere fool without any indication of what its original meaning is. I am a bit surprised that it has been taken out.”
A spokeswoman for Random House said: “We are very sorry if anyone is offended by the language. Jacqueline Wilson aims to reflect the realities of modern life. In the context of the character we felt the word was used in a way that accurately portrayed how children like Jodie and her friends would speak to each other. We have sold over 150,000 copies of the book since March this year and have only received three complaints.”
Is that three cheers for the twit?
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
First individual Olympic gold for India
The numbers first. Since the first modern Olympics in 1900, India has won 8 golds and a silver for team game hockey, one individual gold in shooting (2008), two individual silvers in sprint, and 4 individual bronzes. A grand total of seven individual medals out of 16. Of these, two were won by a Britisher, Norman Pritchard, then representing India. That leaves five medals won by Indian Indians in 108 years.
Perhaps this is progress. Just as the poor in India are becoming poorer at a slower rate, just as cities are getting polluted at a lesser rate than before, the birth rate is also coming down ever so slowly, a marginal decrease in the number of primary school dropouts.
The list of Indian achievements is unending. If it is a drop in the ocean, it's all about how each drop makes an ocean.
There's no stopping the Indian media today. Newspaper reporters and TV teams and their OB vans have been staking out at the residences of Abhinav Bindra, the new Indian wunderkind. Anyone, human or pet, who even remotely knows him, would have been interviewed before the day ends. Political parties and local resident associations must have by now hired the best musical bands, fetched the best of the dry colours left over from last Holi, and budding mimics of plyaback singers who are dime a dozen in every street, to begin celebrating the Indian achievement (the timing of the celebration strangely coinciding with the arrival of the electronic media). Astrologers will have a field day in news television studios.
The media will not rest until they record a phone conversation between Bindra and his mother and father, until the family has visited a place of worship and thanked the God, the Country and India's great past, in that order.
The religious problem in Jammu over a piece of religious land takes backstage today. The courts may or may not pronounce judgments. There will be no one to hear complaints about lack of water in municipal taps or the short-circuitting of an electric transformer. The government ministers will be with their secretaries, checking their appointments with tv news stations at prime time. The country will also conveniently ignore the country's inglorious defeat in the third cricket test against Sri Lanka.
All, thanks to Abhinav Bindra. He made India forget its ills, weaknesses, corruption, atrocities, abuses, poverty, illiteracy and what not. He made the rich and the poor alike sing his country's praise. By night, India would have appropriated Bindra's achievement as its own, a reflection of its 5,000-year past, a precursor to the future when India will emerge a power to reckon with.
Will we Indians ever learn to be honest to ourselves for once by not taking the credit for someone else's success? If Bindra won the gold in Beijing today, it was because he was successful in bucking the system.
There are thousands of Bindras out there in India who are waiting to similarly overcome the system for personal success. How many will eventually succeed?
Perhaps this is progress. Just as the poor in India are becoming poorer at a slower rate, just as cities are getting polluted at a lesser rate than before, the birth rate is also coming down ever so slowly, a marginal decrease in the number of primary school dropouts.
The list of Indian achievements is unending. If it is a drop in the ocean, it's all about how each drop makes an ocean.
There's no stopping the Indian media today. Newspaper reporters and TV teams and their OB vans have been staking out at the residences of Abhinav Bindra, the new Indian wunderkind. Anyone, human or pet, who even remotely knows him, would have been interviewed before the day ends. Political parties and local resident associations must have by now hired the best musical bands, fetched the best of the dry colours left over from last Holi, and budding mimics of plyaback singers who are dime a dozen in every street, to begin celebrating the Indian achievement (the timing of the celebration strangely coinciding with the arrival of the electronic media). Astrologers will have a field day in news television studios.
The media will not rest until they record a phone conversation between Bindra and his mother and father, until the family has visited a place of worship and thanked the God, the Country and India's great past, in that order.
The religious problem in Jammu over a piece of religious land takes backstage today. The courts may or may not pronounce judgments. There will be no one to hear complaints about lack of water in municipal taps or the short-circuitting of an electric transformer. The government ministers will be with their secretaries, checking their appointments with tv news stations at prime time. The country will also conveniently ignore the country's inglorious defeat in the third cricket test against Sri Lanka.
All, thanks to Abhinav Bindra. He made India forget its ills, weaknesses, corruption, atrocities, abuses, poverty, illiteracy and what not. He made the rich and the poor alike sing his country's praise. By night, India would have appropriated Bindra's achievement as its own, a reflection of its 5,000-year past, a precursor to the future when India will emerge a power to reckon with.
Will we Indians ever learn to be honest to ourselves for once by not taking the credit for someone else's success? If Bindra won the gold in Beijing today, it was because he was successful in bucking the system.
There are thousands of Bindras out there in India who are waiting to similarly overcome the system for personal success. How many will eventually succeed?
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